reading last night's post this morning, i realized it sounds like one of those It Must Be God's Will commentaries. it has been a running gag between katie and i for a few months now that every happening and coincidence, no matter how large or small, is met with a reverent and breathy "it must be God's will".

lest i be struck down by holy lightning, i want to point out that i've no beef with God's will, or in believing that it does, in fact, exist. the problem i have is when we, in all our mortal wisdom, assume we can predict it, quantify it, put it in a nice tidy box. if my own campus experience is at all a reliable sample, i suspect that a majority of christian students across this great nation spend much of their time trying to "find God's will for their life".

noble, but arrogant.

not that i'm pointing fingers; i've certainly done my share of sacred guesswork. but at this point, unless i've got a shiny angel or a parted sea or a booming voice thundering down from the heavens, i'm going to assume that God and His will are going to find me soon enough. it's not a mathematical formula to solve, nor a future event to predict. it's the unfolding of something so grand, so perfect, that it makes absolutely no sense at all. it seems it's not until you pause and look back upon the path you have walked that you see the madness taking shape into something beautiful, even as you stand in a scattered sea of puzzle pieces. you recognize all the stupid choices you made, and you acknowledge the healthy ones too; and you realize through the pain and the joy of these decisions, that amazing grace abounds.

instead of trying to find God's will, our time would probably be better spent reflecting on it.

Reader Comments (4)

It's not just Christian students who are looking for God's will in their lives. I would say most Christians in general. (This from one who just finished reading a book on "finding God's will for your life". Which turned out to be wonderfully not oversimplified and formulaic).

I agree that it's much more complex and wonderful than we could dream up. And also that it is one of those things that you usually only make sense of in hindsight.

Really, really good. Of the maybe 8 million times I've decided to give up on the whole God thing, maybe 4.6 million of those were because the whole "God's will" thing, as most Christians describe it, made less than zero sense to me. Then I realized it made no sense to me for a very good reason: because it made no sense.